White Balance by Gomer Justin;

Author:Gomer, Justin;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press

Reynolds’s article reveals the union of neoliberal philosophy and colorblind rhetoric. The colorblind neoliberal dogma of the Reagan administration prioritized the notion that individual freedom superseded group rights, championed the omnipotence of the free market, and linked both ideas to the rhetoric of colorblindness in order to cut the legs out from under civil rights legislation. In its strictly colorblind approach and refusal to consider group rights and discrimination, the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department under Reagan became a tool to paralyze the federal government’s ability to address racial discrimination.

To return to the locker room before the Balboa versus Lang rematch, the handing over of the nation’s flag from Creed to Balboa via his trunks symbolizes not just the unification of the black middle class and the white working class but also the resurgence of white masculinity in the Reagan era. Whereas Rocky I mourns the abandonment of the white working class at the hands of the civil rights movement, Rocky III celebrates white working-class triumph over urban black communities. Rocky III illuminates that whatever elements of racial civility colorblindness insists on, the ideology is and has always been undergirded by very old notions of white supremacy and antiblackness. In his first term, Reagan launched his assault on civil rights programs. When courts handcuffed his ability to gut affirmative action and school integration orders, he changed course and ordered his Justice Department to stop enforcing civil rights laws he opposed. Simultaneously, his Justice Department sought to reframe civil rights in line with the idea of colorblind neoliberalism that privileged individual rights over group ones in order to reframe civil rights as a white male issue and undermine the federal government’s ability to redress racial inequality. Reagan also launched his War on Drugs and ramped up his criminalization of urban black communities in his first four years, which proved fundamental to his larger social and economic agenda. In the years after Rocky III, Reagan and Hollywood would together reimagine black freedom struggles as driven by colorblind white heroes.

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